Inarritu’s ‘Birdman’ soars to Oscars glory

HOLLYWOOD | Dark comedy “Birdman” soared to Oscars glory on Sunday, taking four Academy Awards including best picture and best director honors on Hollywood’s biggest night.

The film, a satire about a washed-up superhero film actor battling to revive his career on Broadway, was a grand triumph for Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who himself won three of the four golden statuettes.

Stylist crime caper “The Grand Budapest Hotel” also won four Oscars, several in technical categories, while jazz drumming drama “Whiplash” scored three, including best supporting actor for veteran actor J.K. Simmons.

Best actor went to Britain’s Eddie Redmayne as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,” while veteran Julianne Moore took best actress as a professor suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s disease in “Still Alice.”

Inarritu, the second Mexican in a row to take the best director Oscar after Alfonso Cuaron won last year for “Gravity,” dedicated his award to his fellow countrymen.

Talking about Mexican immigrants into the United States, he said: “I just pray that they can be treated with the same dignity and respect as the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.”

Coming-of-age drama “Boyhood,” which had been going head-to-head for the best picture race, perhaps suffered the biggest disappointment, with only one Oscar on six nominations — best supporting actress for Patricia Arquette.

Disney’s “Big Hero 6″ was named best animated feature, while Poland’s “Ida” took the best foreign language film prize.

Host Neil Patrick Harris launched the three-and-a-half hour show with a song and dance routine about the movie industry itself — including a joke about the lack of any non-white actors in the four acting categories.

“Tonight, we honor Hollywood’s best and whitest … sorry, brightest,” he said, earning laughs from the star-studded audience at the Dolby Theatre.

POLITICAL NOTE FROM ARQUETTE

Arquette hit a political note in accepting her prize, giving a shoutout to “every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation.

“We have fought for everybody’s equal rights. It is our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” she said.

The biggest standing ovation of the night honored “Selma,” about civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.

The film, while nominated for best picture, controversially failed to secure nods for British actor David Oyelowo and director Ava DuVernay.

In the end, it won for best original song for the rousing “Glory” — and the A-list audience rose to their feet after John Legend and Common performed the song.

Oyelowo could be seen with tears pouring down his face,

“We live in the most incarcerated country in the world,” Legend said as he accepted his Oscar.

“There are more black men under correctional control today than there were under slavery in 1850.”

A star-studded cast of presenters took the stage on Sunday, including Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman, Eddie Murphy, Liam Neeson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey.

Among the funniest moments of the night was when Harris appeared on stage naked except for his underwear, at the end of a backstage skit mimicking a scene from “Birdman.”

John Travolta also got his come-uppance for flubbing singer Idina Menzel’s name at last year’s show as he introduced her to sing “Let It Go,” the Oscar-winning song from “Frozen”.

Harris took a dig at Travolta, joking that Benedict Cumberbatch is how the Pulp Fiction star would pronounce Ben Affleck. Menzel then introduced him as “Glom Gazingo”.

“I deserve that,” Travolta said.

Lady Gaga almost brought the house down with a soaring medley of songs from the classic “The Sound of Music” to mark its 50th anniversary — before welcoming actress Julie Andrews onto the stage.

source: interaksyon.com

Could ‘American Sniper’ sneak up in two-horse Oscar race?

LOS ANGELES | With only a week to go before the Oscars, the all-important Best Picture prize appears locked in a two-horse race between dark comedy “Birdman” and coming-of-age drama “Boyhood.”

But as Hollywood counts down the days to next Sunday’s show, some are suggesting that controversial blockbuster “American Sniper” could yet surprise, and best the two indie films.

“‘Boyhood’ and ‘Birdman’ are the frontrunners, and ‘American Sniper’ is the dark horse,” Matthew Belloni, executive editor of industry journal The Hollywood Reporter, told AFP.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘American Sniper’ had a last-minute surge, because of how well it’s doing at the box office,” he added, referring to the movie’s $365 million-plus global box office haul so far.

The Academy Awards have traditionally favored more independent, art-house fare for Best Picture, handed out at the climax of Hollywood’s annual December-to-February awards season.

WASHED-UP SUPERHERO STAR

“Birdman” — about a washed-up superhero film star battling to revive his career on the stage — is definitely more along its usual lines, as is “Boyhood,” which took 12 years to make as the actors aged in real time.

Both have fared well in pre-Oscars shows, with “Boyhood” taking the Golden Globes’ best film, while “Birdman’ won a string of awards including top prizes at the Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America.

But Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” has unexpectedly stirred up the race, grabbing headlines both for its massive box office success and a row over its portrayal an Iraq war warrior.

Filmmaker Michael Moore claimed it hero-worships former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, while Tea Party firebrand and former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin said leftists were “not fit to shine Chris Kyle’s combat boots.”

The question is, how many of the 6,000-odd voting members of the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the industry’s elite body, will be swayed at this late stage?

They began casting ballots on February 6, and voting closes on Tuesday at 5:00 pm (0100 GMT Monday) — after which only two PriceWaterhouse Coopers staff will know the results before the envelopes are opened on stage next Sunday.

While the Best Picture race is too close to call, several of the other key categories are seen as much easier to predict.

Julianne Moore is almost universally expected to win best actress for playing a professor suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease in “Still Alice.”

Patricia Arquette is the favorite for best supporting actress as the mother in “Boyhood.”

Best actor is between “Birdman” star Michael Keaton and Britain’s Eddie Redmayne as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,” while J.K. Simmons is tipped for supporting actor for jazz drama “Whiplash.”

Belloni said his personal forecast for best director is Mexico’s Alejandro Inarritu for “Birdman” — with the best picture going to “Boyhood.”

“So the Academy will split… much like it did last year,” he said, referring to “12 Years a Slave” taking the best film prize in 2014, while “Gravity” helmer Alfonso Cuaron — also Mexican — took best director.

ALL-WHITE NOMINEES

Talking of “12 Years a Slave,” there was uproar last month when Oscar nominations were announced, over the fact that every single one of the 20 acting nominees are white.

While Martin Luther King Jr movie “Selma” is among the eight Best Picture nominees, eyebrows were raised that neither its British star David Oyelowo nor director Ava DuVernay were shortlisted individually.

“The real snub here is that David Oyelowo… I think a lot of people were surprised that he did not get a nomination for that,” said Belloni.

More broadly, he said, Academy members “feel bad” that only white actors were nominated this year, but added: “I think the problem goes deeper than that.

“The Academy nominates the films that are put up for contention, and other than ‘Selma’ there really weren’t films that featured minority actors in leading and hefty roles,” Belloni added.

“It goes to the kinds of movies that are getting green-lit in Hollywood, and the kinds of people who are making those decisions. Hollywood has made strides in recent years to rectify the diversity problem, but it still exists.”

source: interaksyon.com

Mexico fetes Cuaron’s Oscars, but filmmakers keep feet on ground

MEXICO CITY | As Mexico basks in the glow of its first best director Oscar for Alfonso Cuaron and his blockbuster film “Gravity,” a new generation of homegrown filmmakers wonders if the magic of the golden statuette will rub off on them.

Cuaron’s 3D space thriller scooped seven Oscars, the most of any film on Sunday, and was lauded for groundbreaking special effects conveying space and weightlessness, though it lost the best picture award to drama “12 Years a Slave.

The movie, which stars Sandra Bullock as an astronaut cut loose from her space shuttle, has already earned $700 million at the worldwide box office and Cuaron’s win is the first best director Oscar for a Latin American.

However, the 52-year-old Cuaron has spent most of his career outside Mexico, after he struggled to raise financing for projects back home, and fellow leading directors Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu also both moved abroad.

Back in his homeland, a new generation of Mexican directors has been quick to point out Cuaron’s work has had little to do with the domestic industry. “Gravity” was made for an estimated $100 million by Warner Bros. Pictures, while directors in Mexico have to scramble to drum up just $2 million for a film.

Many Mexican independent filmmakers have had more commercial success abroad than in their home country, where filmmakers complain they can’t compete against the big budgets of Hollywood studios, whose films dominate screens at cinemas.

“The only place where you cannot see Mexican film is in Mexico,” said Ivan Avila Duenas, who debuted his fourth feature film at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s International Film Festival, FICUNAM, on Sunday.

Though Cuaron cut his teeth in Mexico, most of his best known works have been Hollywood-backed projects.

In the 1990s, he left Mexico to work in the United States, then Britain, and became more known for his movie adaptations of British authors, including the third installment of J.K. Rowling’s work, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” as well as P.D. James’ dystopian “Children of Men.”

Ironically, success abroad enabled Cuaron to direct with bigger budgets in Mexico, where his 2001 Spanish-language road trip film “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” helped launch the international careers of actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna.

When Cuaron scored his first hit in the 1990s, Mexican film output was anemic, with only 10 or so films a year. Last year yielded over 100, aided by tax breaks for corporate sponsors and co-productions between Mexican and foreign companies.

NOT MADE IN MEXICO

Cuaron’s fellow expatriates Del Toro and Inarritu, to whom he paid tribute in his Oscar acceptance speech, have also both been backed by big U.S. studios.

The fact is not lost on those still working in Mexico.

“These three do not make Mexican film. They do not make their film in the Mexican system and their themes do not result from living here in the society where the rest of us live,” said Julian Hernandez, whose brooding, homoerotic films have won international awards and foreign distribution, but which have seen little commercial success in conservative Mexico.

“This makes us all happy, to see a Mexican recognized,” Hernandez said. “But this doesn’t mean that it will get any better for Mexican cinema.”

Since the “three amigos” — Cuaron, Del Toro and Inarritu — rose to international fame, another generation of filmmakers has matured and won a string of international awards.

But the new crop have struggled to achieve the same level of box office success and support from Hollywood.

Mexico’s art-scene directors have won honors at the world’s top festivals in Cannes, Berlin and Venice, with gritty, personal visions that mix elements of fiction and documentary.

Mexican drama “Despues de Lucia”, or After Lucia, by writer-director Michel Franco, took the top prize in Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard category in 2012.

And the minimalist films of festival favorites Carlos Reygadas and Amat Escalante, who won the best director award in Cannes last year, star non-actors in fictional tales. Last month, Alonso Ruizpalacios won Berlin’s best first feature award with his debut “Gueros.”

Meanwhile, other directors like Eugenio Polgovsky and Juan Carlos Rulfo have pushed the boundaries of documentaries.

“The challenge is getting more of these movies actually distributed and released,” said Robert Koehler, a Los Angeles-based film critic with publication Cinema Scope, who argued that filmmakers should look at “Gravity” “as the Trojan horse for importing Mexican cinema into the United States.”

After more than a decade of growing critical success, the local industry is finally scoring some big commercial hits.

Last year saw two box office records for local films, first with “Nosotros los Nobles” (We Are the Nobles) a comedy that lampoons Mexico’s upper class, that made over $26 million.

It was followed by “Instructions Not Included,” which starred TV comic Eugenio Derbez as an Acapulco playboy forced to raise a baby dumped on his doorstep.

“Instructions” nearly doubled “Nobles” domestic take and went on to become the top grossing Spanish-language film in the United States, with a worldwide take of over $85 million.

Speaking backstage after winning, Cuaron said he hoped his success would spur more interest in other Mexican filmmakers.

“I don’t think there is enough attention paid to Mexican culture and what is happening in Mexico,” he said.

source: interaksyon.com